bitcoin is a currency from the simple fact that you can buy things with it or trade it for another coin if you want just as you do if you buy something in another country that use different currency than yours. with your logic everyone who use dollars or any fiat money is being schemed cause he trades something with actual value(like food) for something with no actual value like the dollar. and no, "required by law to recognize it's value" don't mean much when people realize that they can't buy what they actually need with the fiat currency(with the "real value") and you can see it in countries with fiat currency crisis like venezuela and iran. in the previous decade there was also the example of the Zimbabwean dollar that lost all of its value within a few years and turned into nothing but a piece of paper you can only use for wiping your ass.
the country can only promote the fake value of the money but at the end its value becomes just as fake as any other coin whether it is a fiat coin or cryptocurrency cause you can't do anything with a piece of paper called a dollar other than trading it for something you realy can use like food or a car.

"imaginary currency that only exists virtually", when you look at the numbers in your bank accounts and see something like 30000$ in the account what do you think this number represent? a vault in the bank full of dollars with your name written on it?, nope, they are just "only exists virtually" cause all the banking systems works with computers.

cryptocurrency skeptics like you tend to forget(or not bothering to know)what the "real money" is and how its work.


but bitcoin can be somekind of a scheme if you only want to use it as an investment and expect its prices to get skyrocketed again and again and make you rich, many of those people are actually more like you cause like you cause they don't see bitcoin(or other cryptocurrencies) as currency at all and only see it as an investment or scheme they can use to make money.